Thursday’s Art Notes

Members of the French street theatre company ‘Compagnie des Quidams’ perform the play ‘Reve d’Herbert’ (Dream of Herbert) to promote the upcoming Roppongi Art Night in Tokyo on March 25, 2010. Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/ AFP/ Getty Images

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‘At the Movies,’ the film review TV show started by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (and now hosted by Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott) has been cancelled after 20 years on the air. Ebert reflected on why the show is ending, and about plans for the start of a new, more new media driven show on his blog. (Also there, catch a clip from the show’s first incarnation “Sneak Previews,” which first debuted on PBS station WTTW in Chicago.)

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Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 ‘Fountain’ was a creative statement that debunked the almost-sacred preciousness of a work of art. But of course, being a landmark piece in the history of modern art elevated it, or at least the idea of it, to its own sacred stature. Now, several fake copies of the piece (not any of the eight copies he commissioned in 1964) have turned up in Italy, according to the Economist.

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New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Indians — the artisans who design extraordinary and expensive costumes to wear a couple times a year for the city’s spring festivities — are seeking compensation from the people who snap (and profit from) their photographs by copyrighting their designs.